Сборники работ по искусству

The Medici court painter Botticelli is one of the unequivocal artists of the Italian Renaissance alongside Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and Raphael. Favouring feminine portraits, Botticelli stands apart through the finesse of his lines and the unbridled sensuality of his paintings. With his religious and private commissions, this Florentine artist introduced the profane into art through works of complex mythological subjects, such as the incontrovertibly masterful Primavera and The Birth of Venus, and knew how to delight the erudite patrons of art. The Madonna of the Magnificat remains one of the most beautiful examples of the Virgin ever achieved. Between the delicacy of the Renaissance and the exuberance of Mannerism, the richness and refinement of the works of Botticelli are a magnificent delight.

The official catalogue of the major exhibition at the Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main

The graceful beauty of his female figures, the humanist influence, and the courtly solemnity of his painting make the works of Sandro Botticelli (ca. 1445–1510) the epitome of Florentine art during the golden age of the reign of Lorenzo Medici, known as il Magnifico. This splendid volume takes the reader on a journey through the artistic world of one of the most famous Renaissance painters. One focus is Botticelli’s masterful portraits, which bring to life those in his circle of patrons, for whose palaces he created grand mythological paintings and precious memorials to rival those of antiquity. This publication provides the reader with impressive insight into Botticelli’s important contributions to Florentine art, and also traces the ideals of feminine beauty, embodied not only by his enchanting goddesses and Madonnas, but also in the idealized portrait of an unknown lady.

An affordable compact edition of the major monograph that offers new insights into the life and work of this astonishing creative genius.

Often Bruegels subjects are traditional: stories from the Bible and mythology, scenes of country life, and cycles of the seasons. But among the multitude of people within them are mysterious figures, enigmatic incidents, and demonic faces. The meaning of these remarkable paintings continues to intrigue us today, more than four centuries after the artist's death. An art historian and a painting conservator and restorer, each of the authors bring their special expertise to bear on the many questions that still remain about Bruegel's life and his intellectual outlook.

Richly illustrated, this important book reveals much new information about one of the most intriguing figures of Renaissance art. Extensive notes, a chronology, bibliography, and a list of Bruegel's exhibitions and catalogues complete the work. It will be an indispensable addition to the libraries of scholars, students, and the many lovers of Bruegel's paintings.

Born in Jena, Germany in 1954, Werner Büttner was a law student when he befriended artist Albert Oehlen, whose influence prompted him to give up his future law career to take up art. He is now a successful artist based in Hamburg, where he is professor at the Hochschule für bildende Künste. His work has been exhibited with Oehlen's as well as Martin Kippenberger's and is considered to be of the same tradition. Coinciding with the exhibition Werner Büttner: Verkehrte Welt at the Deichtorhallen in Hamburg this book covers about 150 pieces from the last two decades - from oil on canvas and drawings to collages, personal photographs, and invitations. Also included are a foreword by Zdenek Felix (director of Deichtorhallen), five texts by friends and colleagues of Büttner (Michael Diers, Harald Falckenberg, Friedrich Wolfram Heubach, Fritz Kramer, and Rudolf Schmitz), an exhibition chronology, and a bibliography.

Introduced to painting and perspective by his father, a theatre decorator, the Venetian Giovanni Antonio Canal, known as Canaletto (1697-1768), is best known for his vedute. Whilst the amateurs of his time brought back their landscape paintings as evidence of their travels in Italy, Canaletto became the incarnation of La Serenissima of the baroque period.

A forerunner in his method of spacing out the different planes of his works, he embellished his pictures with details in order to better highlight the distances, and used a camera obscura in the composition of his paintings. With the precision of the lines and the tonality of the palette, Canaletto’s paintings are still, defined by his own hand, the most beautiful panoramas in the history of art.

In course of this inspired, richly-illustrated text, Octave Uzanne revives the reader’s passion for this striking Venetian painter of the seventeenth century.

120 illustrations

It took a mid-twentieth century art show in Milan to rediscover this Italian artist, emblematic of the Baroque period, who lived during the second half of the 16th and first half of the 17th centuries.
Michelangelo Merisi was born to a family of modest means in 1571 near Milan. At the age of thirteen, he became an apprentice of the painter Simone Peterzano, who taught him artistic techniques and the use of colours. But he was atracted by Rome, with its fast pace of life and its loose morals. In 1597, he became the protégé to a noble cardinal who assisted him in securing important orders, such as The Martyrdom of St. Matthew, but he turned many of the offers down because of the vulgarity of the subject. Rejecting mannerism in favour of realism, this artist of the Counter- Reformation restored to the saints their humanity. Paradoxically, this mystical painter gives the saints a sensuality which goes beyond veneration and opens the door to an ambiguous eroticism.
Caravaggio also experienced the taste of dishonour and prison. After the murder of Tomasi, he was condemned to exile. He died on the 18th of July 1610 as he had lived – unexpectedly, like a character in a novel, far away from his beloved Rome, on the eve of his pardon by Pope Paul V.
His work remains tremendous – both his themes and his techniques became an inspiration for Rubens, Velázquez, and Rembrandt, inspiring especially the technique of chiaroscuro, of which he was one of the precursors.
With the help of numerous colour reproductions, this book retraces the life of Caravaggio and analyses his work while illustrating the scope of his influence on the greatest artists.

Notorious bad boy of Italian Baroque painting, Caravaggio (1571-1610) is finally getting the recognition he deserves. Though his name may be familiar to all of us, his work has been habitually detested and forced into obscurity. Not only was his theatrical realism unfashionable in his time, but his sacrilegious subject matter and use of lower class models were violently scorned.

Caravaggio's great work had the misfortune of enduring centuries of disrepute. It wasn't until the end of the 19th century that he was rediscovered and, quite posthumously, deemed a great master. He is now considered the most important painter of the early Baroque period; without him there would have been no Ribera, Zurbarán, Velázquez, Vermeer or Georges de la Tour. Franz Hals, Rembrandt, Delacroix, and Manet would have been different.

In this anniversary edition you'll find over 50 of Caravaggio's best paintings; we think you'll agree that he was a genius beyond his time.

The editor:
Gilles Néret (1933–2005) was an art historian, journalist, writer and museum correspondent. He organized several art retrospectives in Japan and founded the SEIBU museum and the Wildenstein Gallery in Tokyo. He directed art reviews such as L'Œil and Connaissance des Arts and received the Elie Faure Prize in 1981 for his publications.

About the Series:
Every book in TASCHEN's Basic Art Series features:

* a detailed chronological summary of the artist's life and work, covering the cultural and historical importance of the artist
* approximately 100 color illustrations with explanatory captions
* a concise biography

Every extant work by Caravaggio is reproduced in color in this lavish newly updated volume, the long-awaited result of more than 20 years of research by a leading authority on the artist.

In an engaging and informed text, John T. Spike explores in detail Caravaggio's scandalous life and provocative work. Placing Caravaggio within the broad panorama of society and ideas at the turn of the 17th century, the author sets a richly detailed stage for an artist who has been called "the first modern painter." Caravaggio (1571-1610) reflected in his canvases his own desires and spiritual crises to an extent no one ever had imagined possible, and he shocked his contemporaries by portraying the saints and virgins of Christianity with the faces and bodies of his companions and lovers in Rome's demimonde.

Accompanying the book is a critical catalog on CD-ROM in which all of Caravaggio's extant paintings, as well as lost and rejected works, are thoroughly described. Each entry specifies the work's medium, dimensions, location, and provenance, and provides an annotated bibliography of sources. Most of the entries conclude with a brief technical analysis. Much of this scientific data, of prime importance for attribution and dating, has not previously been published.

With its fresh insights, as well as judicious readings of the documents and the physical evidence of the paintings themselves, Caravaggio is the most thorough study on the artist to date, and it will no doubt remain a definitive monograph for many years to come.

Revised Second Edition

120 illustrations

It took a mid-twentieth century art show in Milan to rediscover this Italian artist, emblematic of the Baroque period, who lived during the second half of the 16th and first half of the 17th centuries.
Michelangelo Merisi was born to a family of modest means in 1571 near Milan. At the age of thirteen, he became an apprentice of the painter Simone Peterzano, who taught him artistic techniques and the use of colours. But he was atracted by Rome, with its fast pace of life and its loose morals. In 1597, he became the protégé to a noble cardinal who assisted him in securing important orders, such as The Martyrdom of St. Matthew, but he turned many of the offers down because of the vulgarity of the subject. Rejecting mannerism in favour of realism, this artist of the Counter- Reformation restored to the saints their humanity. Paradoxically, this mystical painter gives the saints a sensuality which goes beyond veneration and opens the door to an ambiguous eroticism.
Caravaggio also experienced the taste of dishonour and prison. After the murder of Tomasi, he was condemned to exile. He died on the 18th of July 1610 as he had lived – unexpectedly, like a character in a novel, far away from his beloved Rome, on the eve of his pardon by Pope Paul V.
His work remains tremendous – both his themes and his techniques became an inspiration for Rubens, Velázquez, and Rembrandt, inspiring especially the technique of chiaroscuro, of which he was one of the precursors.
With the help of numerous colour reproductions, this book retraces the life of Caravaggio and analyses his work while illustrating the scope of his influence on the greatest artists.

Caravaggio in Detail is the fourth title in our successful In Detail series, following Van Eyck, Bruegel and Bosch. The Italian genius Caravaggio is considered one of the most important artists of the Baroque era. The Italian master’s painting style was groundbreaking, not only because of his unique treatment of light and shade, but above all for his unprecedented realism: instead of the customary idealised figures, he painted everyday, working-class people, even in religious scenes.

This book allows you to explore Caravaggio’s turbulent life and his equally dramatic work in a surprising way. The book is divided into themed chapters: Still Lifes, Hidden Self-Portraits and Stimulated Senses, and shows the paintings as never before, in stunning, full-page details.

About the Author:

The author, art historian Stefano Zuffi, offers new insights in an original and accessible way into the work of the Pasolini of painting. He takes us on a journey from detail to detail, with beautiful visual material from masterpieces including Medusa, David and Goliath, Judith and Holofernes and The Fortune Teller.

The works of Caravaggio and his followers and contemporaries in early 17th-century Rome.

Caravaggio was an unquestioned genius who eclipsed all other artists of his time. But just who were these fellow travellers? Bringing together 200 works from world collections, Caravaggio's Rome is the first work to reconstruct the connective tissue of the Eternal City where the great genius lived and worked. In the vibrant and exhilarating years of the reassertion of Catholic Papacy after the Lutheran scare, celebrated in the Holy Year 1600, Rome became the cultural capital of Europe, drawing in thousands of artists from Italy (Caravaggio among them) and also from other great European nations: Spain, France, Germany, the Netherlands.

In the period 1595-1635, Rome was characterized by a creative ferment which may be considered to mark the beginning of truly European art. Yet to be studied in sufficient depth, the city at the time was a crucible in which artists of different backgrounds, cultures and tongues worked side by side exchanging techniques, stimuli, experiences, styles and iconographies. In the space of a few years, they swept away the late Mannerist stereotypes and ushered in the most extraordinary artistic rebirth ever witnessed in Rome. The results would be felt all over Europe throughout the seventieth century.

The catalogue relates this poorly known story to a broad audience, rendering justice and visibility to talented artists who had the misfortune of living in Rome in the early decades of the sixteen hundreds and have languished into modern times in the shadow of the incredibly popular Caravaggio.

Caravaggio's Rome 1600-1630: Volume I: Works , Volume II: Essays

Caravaggio, or more accurately Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571–1610), was a legend even in his own lifetime. Celebrated by some for his naturalism and his revolutionary pictorial inventions, he was considered by others to have destroyed painting. Few other artists have provoked such controversy and so many contradictory interpretations right up to modern times.

Just in time for the Caravaggio year 2010, this work offers a comprehensive reassessment of Caravaggio's entire oeuvre, with a catalogue raisonné of his works. Five introductory chapters analyse his artistic career from his training in Lombard Milan and his triumphal rise in papal Rome, up to his dramatic final years in Naples, Malta and Sicily. The spotlight thereby falls upon the radical nature and innovative force of Caravaggio's art and its influence in all of Europe.

Our understanding of Caravaggio's work has been substantially broadened in recent decades by major exhibitions, restoration campaigns, new attributions and archival discoveries. The new catalogue raisonné offers a detailed overview of the artist's entire œuvre based on the latest research. Every painting is reproduced in large-scale format, with spectacular details that offer dramatic close-ups and set new standards in print quality. A new photographic campaign has been undertaken, enabling the smallest details to be reproduced on a large scale for the first time. They reveal all the more clearly Caravaggio’s virtuosity and his enormous ability to capture the viewer’s attention and to build a communicative bridge between the worlds of picture and viewer. Sequences of spectacular details grouped by subject allow us to experience Caravaggio’s ingenious rhetoric of looks and gestures and their theatrical staging in paint.

This is a fascinating re-evaluation of the life and works of a hugely talented yet controversial artist.

The young Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571-1610) created a major stir in late-sixteenth-century Rome with the groundbreaking naturalism and highly charged emotionalism of his paintings.

"Caravaggio" is a sumptuously illustrated and engagingly written volume that takes a fresh look at Caravaggio's life and works, uncovering evidence that the efforts of Caravaggio's contemporaries to disparage his character and his artwork often sprang from their own cultural biases or a desire to promote the artistic achievements of his rivals, and that contrary to repeated claims, Caravaggio lacked neither education nor piety, but was an extremely accomplished technician who developed a successful marketing strategy.

A Revolution in Painting 

The mysterious genius who transformed European art Caravaggio, or more accurately Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571—1610), was always a name to be reckoned with. Notorious bad boy of Italian painting, the artist was at once celebrated and controversial: violent in temper, precise in technique, a creative master, and a man on the run. Today, he is considered one of the greatest influences in all art history. 

This Bibliotheca Universalis edition offers a neat yet comprehensive Caravaggio catalogue raisonne. Each of his paintings is reproduced from recent top-quality photography, allowing for a vivid encounter with the artist s ingenious repertoire of looks and gestures, as well as numerous detail shots of his boundary-breaking naturalism, whether a grubby foot or the soft folds of a sagging stomach. Five accompanying chapters trace the complete arc of Caravaggio s career from his first public commissions in Rome through to his growing celebrity status, while the book s detailed chronology traces his tempestuous personal life, in which drama loomed as prominently as in his chiaroscuro canvases

About the series:

Bibliotheca Universalis — Compact cultural companions celebrating the eclectic TASCHEN universe at an unbeatable, democratic price!

Since we started our work as cultural archaeologists in 1980, TASCHEN has become synonymous with accessible, open-minded publishing. Bibliotheca Universalis brings together more than 100 of our all-time favourite titles in a neat new format so you can curate your own affordable library of art, anthropology, and aphrodisia.

Bookworm’s delight — never bore, always excite!

This refreshing new book, a lavishly produced and illustrated volume on the controversial 19th-century Romantic artist, addresses Caspar David Friedrich’s modern critics while deepening our appreciation for his singular genius.

"A painting must stand as a painting, made by human hand", wrote Caspar David Friedrich, "not seek to disguise itself as nature." One of his generation’s most popular painters, Friedrich imagined landscapes of powerful beauty and spirituality from within the confines of his studios. This breathtaking monograph, filled with glorious reproductions and details of his paintings, argues for Friedrich’s reputation as a sublime artist and interpreter of nature. In his thoughtful and wellresearched commentary, author Johannes Grave explores Friedrich’s unique approach to landscape painting as well as his revolutionary thoughts about how these paintings should be received by their viewers. Looking closely at pieces such as "Monk by the Sea", "The Abbey in the Oakwood", and the "Tetschen Altar", Graves shows how Friedrich developed an innovative approach to landscape painting, one that communicated a new sense of space and time, and which draws the viewer into a unique aesthetic experience.

Readable, insightful, and copiously illustrated in a deluxe volume, this compelling new perspective sheds crucial light on Friedrich’s celebrated body of work.